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"Of course, being a Quadro it does bring all of the secret sauce that NVIDIA packages with its workstation class cards"

What does this secret sauce do these days, the only documents i've found are rather old and talk of anti-aliasing in CAD software. Other "CUDA capable" cards offer GPU-assistance in for example Adobe CS and CAD software is no longer particularly bound by cpu so the only benefit i've seen is the larger video RAM which can be found on normal cards anyway, so what does the price premium actually buy?Reply

I believe it's line anti-aliasing, better OpenGL drivers (with ISV certification for various applications), and some 64-bit FP performance enhancements. To my knowledge, all of this stuff is available in the standard NVIDIA GPUs, but they only enable it on the Quadro drivers.Reply

FP64 is the big one. ATI's high end GPUs are limited to FP64 performance that's 1/5th of FP32. Nvidia's high end consumer cards only have 1/.8th, while GT100/110 quadro's are 1/2 (the highest possible without throttling FP32). For scientific computing this is enough to justify paying several times as much as a consumer card so nVidia hobbles the GeForces to support sales of Tesla boxes.Reply

FP64 is really for tesla though. Maybe workstation cards still have the full performance FP64 enabled, but honestly noone would care. It's pretty much line aa still I think, plus geforce cards also have artificial limitation on (non-tesselated) geometric throughput.Reply

The secret sauce is overlay planes and 3D wireframe performance. Consumer cards are great for tesselated 3d with texture maps, but most are pretty horrible when there a hundreds of thousands of 3D wireframe edges in a view.

You are correct about the drivers being better also. While a crazy "flareout" or glitch from a surface is no big deal in a game, it is a show stopper on a real 3D engineering model. Not that I am a Nvidia fanboy, but their workstation class drivers have always been better in my opinion.Reply

Well, I do appreciate a decent screen, and you know what I might even be ready to pay 550$ extra for it, but a 17" laptop?What's the point for that?They never fit onto anything else but a desk. Even 15" laptops are a pain to carry around.

So why not get a decent all in one PC like an iMac ?And why, oh why is there no smaller laptop that offers a decent screen?M.Reply

Not really.... ThinkPad and others make 15" notebooks with top-end i7 mobile CPUs. The 17" models typically have room for a 2nd drive and a 2nd video card and because of the bigger screen, a much larger battery.

So in general, no... the extra 2" are not helping to keep it cool.Reply

I have 1920 x 1200 resolution on my main workstation and really appreciate it, that is the main reason I chose this laptop... that and the 8GB RAM and i7 860 processor.

You ask a very good question about laptop screens - and why nobody really has decent resolution on a smaller laptop.

The point with this is that I can take it places. I have a rolling laptop case for longer trips. This is not a netbook or a carry-into-Starbucks laptop, it is a desktop replacement, running two or three Virtual-machines that I can take to meetings or other locations in my company - and work, REALLY work.

There are many classes of "laptops" these days, from ultra-light netbook to, well, THIS.Reply

anand finally get their hands on a non-apple premium notebook. something i have been using for years, and wanted to see a objective review badly. the IPS screen is very very good and certainly not anything TN can be compared to, that include RGB LED TN that apple, lenovo, dell uses in their high end. the chart doesn't really do all the justice. if you actually view the screen from an angle, you will very, and i do mean VERY appreciate the benefit of IPS technology. in a realistic situation, you, or people who you want to share view, are never in a ideal 0 degree angle from screen, and that's when the IPS matter the most.

however, i disagree with the track pointer. they are far far away from ones you find in the thinkpad. as matter of fact, if you don't use track pointer at all, you won't see the difference. However, for people who rely on track pointer, it is a big deal. or example. say you are scroll up or down a page, or zoom in and out in firefox (with help of holding ctrl) , the easiest way to do on lenovo system is, hold the middle mouse button on the track point pad, and move the point up or down. super, super easy, and allows you to move pages left/right/up/down with millimeter movement on your finger. now, on HP unit. first of all, track pointer button require a lot of force to be pressed, i would say it probably requires 3~4X more force than thinkpad, second, the track pointer is level below keys,so you have to dig in to operator the pointer. and the worse part is the middle button cannot be configered. let me give you an example below.

say you are on cnn.com reading news, and you want to scroll down. on a thinkpad, no matter where you cursor is, just hold middle button using your thumb, and move your figure on the pointer (similar to type "space" + "B"). on a HP, you can only do it OCCASIONALLY. meaning you have to move the cursor away from any hyper link before you can navigate. or else it will open a new tab, very very annoy. and there is no way to fix it either...

and again, the touch screen audio bar, is there any one can operate it at all?Reply

What is it with you people? I'm currently sitting on my couch with my 17" laptop on ... wait for this... wait for it... IT'S ON MY LAP! OMG! How dang small are you? Three feet tall? Do you ride around in hotwheels all day? Is Mini Me your physical superior? A 17" laptop is like 15-16 inches wide, most people are wider than that. Where do you like to put your laptop, on your nose? Hold it in the palm of your hand?

You say even 15" laptops are a pain to carry around? Were you born on the moon? Are your bones brittle and weak? Stop being a wuss, maybe this is why heart disease is starting to rise in thin people even, because people are so weak and out of shape that they think carrying a 6-7 lb laptop is hard. I hope you enjoy sitting there squinting at your 10.3" 1000x600 laptop placed precariously on the armrest of your sofa just so you can feel unencumbered.Reply

Considering you can get the 8540w with DreamColor 2 1080 for around $2150, and that includes a Quadro 880M GPU and an i5-520M, I'd say it would be trivial to make such a system with a 460M consumer GPU instead. Problem is, apparently they don't see a market for it. Heck, with the current sale you can get an i7-620M and DC2 plus a few other extras and still be around $2500.Reply

If you are smart with the choices, you can get this laptop for a decent price. I paid $1862 after tax with a 28% discount back in June. Aside from upgrading the screen to 1920x1200 /w camera, adding backlit keyboard and getting quad core (for the 4 dimm slots), I kept everything at it's bare minimum. I upgraded the memory, hd and added a SSD myself.

HP's business support is fantastic. I purchased an open box docking station from ebay which broke after 2 weeks. HP sent a brand new one to me with overnight delivery. I didn't even have to send the old one back. Any complaints about HP's customer service, is most likely directed towards their consumer products.Reply

First, for a "business" class notebook, 17" are TOO big. And with todays extra-wide-made-for-movies screens, 15.6" displays are just wide versions of 14" monitors.. might as well save a point and space for a quality 14" notebook nowadays.

Price as Configured is $5400~6500 (depending on coupon)... for that much money, might as well get a ThinkPad W701DS! Yeah, its a bit older - until Lenovo upgrades the touchpad and keyboard... where is our W710?

And this ThinkPad has dual screens. A 17" at 1920x1200 and the 2nd 10" screen does 768x1280.

Oh, and the keyboard is real... not the cheezy and easier to break island keyboards... but the trackpad is out-dated compared to the newer ThinkPads. They have the a light that makes it easier to see the keyboard at night... but it would be nice to have back-lit keys while keeping the great feel of a ThinkPad.

At 17 inches - these are work station, not office type computers... they are heavy and expensive.

The W510 (15" screen with 1920x1200 rez) with similar stats above like the HP is about $2200 is better suited for business.Reply

For an "enterprise" $6000+ product, it comes with a cheezy keyboard found on their $500 toss-in-the-garbage models. Other than that, its a bit of a sexy notebook... which looks almost like an older 17" IdeaPad, down to the cheezy keyboard.

Many of the aspects of this HP design are obviously that they are from ThinkPad. The heavy-duty hinges, Trackpoint in the center of the keyboard, 3-button "mouse" buttons below and above the trackpad. So yes, this is aimed at serious people who tend to get a ThinkPad.

So, I'll stick to my phrase "Why bother", when you can get a ThinkPad with better specs in most areas for about $1000 less.

One major reason: ThinkPad doesn't have an IPS LCD. They use the same RGB LED backlit panel as the Dell M6500 (pretty sure anyway). Also, style preferences are just that: preferences. I'm sure plenty of people will prefer the look and keyboard on the 8740w. Having used an 8440w in person, I can say that I have no complaints with that keyboard, and a larger chassis with 10-key shouldn't change the feel much.

If you want a ThinkPad, sure, get a ThinkPad. If you want a Dell Precision, there's that option as well. If you want an IPS LCD, though, you're going to have to get an EliteBook.Reply

Considering what Lenovo charges for their 1920x1200 screens, I would think it would be a different type of screen.

I guess these new flat-keyboards are made for anyone under 30, eh? I'm in the camp that likes curved keys and a nice feeling keyboard - something that Lenovo hasn't messed with since they bought the ThinkPad line. And they redesigned the keyboard slight and its for the better.

Personally, I think its odd for Lenovo to still sell the older-style chassis with their W7xx series.Reply

Many designers work at the office and at home. The 17" works well because its very hard to work on a 15" screen.The size isn't bad when you consider they are only transporting it from office to car and car to home.

Now if you are traveling everywhere such as on a plane, then you wouldn't be looking at one of these anyway.

I'm just glad Anantech is taking the time to review a wide variety of laptops and emphasizing screen quality. Hopefully product managers and marketing get off their high horse and realize that people don't want crap. A lot of us are willing to pay for quality. If laptop manufacturers would just look at what has been reviewed and look at all the plus and minuses, then make a notebook that is all pluses. It really isn't that hard. Apple really took charge on this (although not perfect), so I hope others follow.Reply

I'm an Engineer/Scientist/Programmer who works at home, and use a 17" Dell with an upgraded 1920 x 1200 panel, bought in early 2007. I remember having to fight hard to justify the extra $300 in screen and cpu upgrades, but they were well worth it. Our normal upgrade laptop cycle is 3 years, but with a T7200 Merom and a 1920 x 1200 "true life" display, I can hang onto my system for a while yet. Along with a recent SSD upgrade, my system is about as fast as anything I can buy new at the moment (until SandyBridge, I think).

What kills me sometimes is the weight - it can really hurt your shoulder after carrying it a while. My computer case has wheels, so I use those whenever possible.

I fly a lot, so get free upgrades to economy plus on United. With the extra leg room, I can easily use my 17" laptop on the plane.Reply

With one our ThinkPad users, he has a dock that allows him to connect two 23" 1920x1080 screens. So he gets the portability of a 14" notebook with the power to drive two big monitors. Not bad for a $250 dock with DVI & Display Port connectors, which also has USB, Ethernet and recharges the notebook's battery.Reply

"even after calibration colors can feel oversaturated. 100% Adobe RGB gamut is good for those that need it, but for everyone else working in sRGB color space, that's the penalty."

Sorry guys, but that's just not true.

One has to use color-managed applications to judge if color is good or not. In a non-color-managed environment, a wide gamut display will have incorrect (oversaturated) colors, just like a low-gamut display (undesaturated).

Just curious, how do you judge whether the colors are oversaturated or not? What do you look at and with what software?Reply

In my line of work, I have to often align X-ray beams for scientific equipment. I can use a high-sensitive, high-precision detector, or just use my eyes and a fluorescent screen to maximize the X-ray beam intensity. Although I always double-check things using the detector, I've found that my eyes can detect tiny changes in the green glow from the fluorescent screen, and always get the sensitive alignments spot on. We are talking about very small changes - its pretty amazing what the eyes can detect.Reply

I'm curious... what exactly is "not true" about the above statement? (This is directed at Dorin.) Good for those that need it is another way of saying "good in color managed applications", which is why we go on to state that everyone working in sRGB isn't going to like it as much.Reply

What is not true, or rather not correct, is saying that having a wider gamut is a penalty and/or a drawback.

Remember the days when computers had a Turbo switch? We used it to slow down the programs (mostly games perhaps; Pacman running too fast? :)) that were designed for slower machines, and that were running too fast on newer better computers. Is it correct to say that newer faster machines are worse or the extra MHz are a penalty? Or rather that was a programs' problem?

Same here. Programs or systems that display oversaturated colors on a wide gamut display, are basically not functioning correctly.

Also, regarding "even after calibration colors can feel oversaturated"... calibration, at least on Windows, is a two-step procedure: 1) profile and calibrate display; 2) use color-managed software. There's no point to calibrate the display without using color-managed software and no point to use color managed software without calibration. If you use both as you should, the colors will not "feel oversaturate". In this regard, the statement is false and misleading to those that do not have at least a basic understanding about color management.Reply

The problem is that so many applications assume sRGB color space, so if we go by your suggestion that anything that's not color managed is not functioning properly, about the only apps that are "correct" are Adobe Photoshop (and presumably Premiere and a few others). Interestingly enough, Windows Photo Viewer appears to be managed -- i.e. the colors look correct after calibration -- but only if you're not in fullscreen mode. I took some photos in the Dell XPS 15 review a few weeks back comparing colors, and you can clearly see that fullscreen, the B+GR panel in the XPS looks oversaturated, and the older Studio XPS 16 RGB LED looks even more so!Reply

Yikes, 49w idle. That's pretty much small desktop + typical laptop TN LED monitor territory, but that's not quite what the hardware is, which raises questions.

Any chance that you checked the power with the screen on and off while it was plugged in? I'm curious how much the screen is hurting it there, as every variation of desktop IPS monitors seems to use a bit more than their TN counterparts.Reply

That's a really really hefty enterprise tax you pay there. It is using 4 4GB so-dimms. You can buy these easily for about 60 bucks each nowadays (or 240$ for 4 of them). That's worse than what apple overcharges...(Though I understand there's a premium for 8GB so-dimms, which are nowhere near mainstream, but again it's very ridiculous - more than 2k per dimm...)Reply

Both the gtx 480m and the desktop gtx 465 have 352 cores (11 SM) enabled. The quadro fx 5000m only has 320 cores (10 SM) enabled. Unless you absolutely must have workstation graphics in your notebook, this is very obviously about the worst choice of chip you could order (price, power consumption, not even performance is anything to write home about).Reply

Mostly for a point of reference. You'll note that other than running the tests, we didn't spend a lot of time in the intro or conclusion discussing the games. I have to admit that Dustin and I probably aren't the best people to talk to regarding workstation graphics. I had him run the standard SPECviewperf 11 to cover that aspect, but if you have any other tests you'd like to suggest, please let us know.Reply

Seems like the main reason to get an IPS screen is color fidelity. So I'd be interested to learn if this machine (or others) is effective for photo editing. Or more generally, what CPU/GPU combinations are best for that application. And what features of the CPU/GPU do Aperture, Photoshop, and Lightroom use for hardware accelleration (if any).Reply

Is the comparison to the M6500 fair? The chart numbers might be misleading, if they apply during perfect perpendicular measurements, while real laptop use involves viewing the screen non-perpendicular and with a different angle on the top versus bottom.

This point is dramatized when you consider a 25-28" TN, which has a huge color shift from top-to-bottom with normal viewing, but the chart numbers might look fine.Reply

I wondered this ever since I got the M6400 which actually had a Q43 chipset which comes with an integrated GPU - all they had to do is use it and add a hardware switch and you would have a 1-2 hour longer battery life (it was around 2 hours of low intensity usage at best).

It's even more obvious with this HP model which offers up to an hour and a half of light usage. There are certainly situations where you could use that extra time and given the price tag on these laptops, hybrid graphics should be there. It would be also cool if the CPUs would offer disabling some cores in these low intensity usage situations.

I like the improvements in the looks department of the HP compared to my old 8710w (brushed aluminum vs plastic and a backlighted keyboard (finally!!)), but I'd still vote for the M6500 looks and keyboard.Reply

BTW, the mobile GPUs are rather disappointing in the gaming department by looking at the 3dMark 2006 numbers which are still only a little above the FX3700M. And there was the FX3800M and now the FX5000M. The names change, but little else does :)

For gaming (however silly it may sound to buy one of these workstations for moderate gaming, but I really hate the childish design of the gaming laptops plus their added weight and dimensions), the best buy would be the ATI cards (the M7740 or M7820) which offer similar performance levels with a lower TDP and a much lower price tag. Too bad the M7740 wasn't around when I was getting my Dell. Anybody wants to trade? :)Reply

I understand where you're coming from because it's rather tiring to carry these 17" beasts around. M6400 is like 3.8 kilos plus that beast of a charger is an extra kilo and more plus the bag and extra equipment. I have the small low heat low noise laptop which I usually carry together with this one for longer trips so it gets even heavier :)Reply

You can choose any 5 displays, but a maximum of two may be "legacy" (DVI or VGA, not sure about internal).

What was the color depth on that DreamColor display? I know the desktop DreamColor is a 30-bit display. Do any of your LCD tests show off the difference between six- and eight-bit-per-component displays (18 and 24 bits total, respectively)?

Plus, if my 8530w is any indication, you can install (without any hacking!) the generic Mobile Catalyst Drivers -- it shows up as Radeon in device manager, but the GL renderer name "Compatibility Profile Context FireGL".Reply